User manual

PaperCut - Sharp OSA Manual 2014-12-24

Card Number Needs No Conversion

 A typical case is the checksum being reported after the card number,

separated by an equals sign, such as in 5235092385=8. PaperCut can

handle this case by default; it will extract the number before the equal sign as

the card number: 5235092385.

Regular Expression Filters

 For some cases, a “regular expression” may be required that will filter the

card number from the complete string of characters reported by the card

reader. Documentation on regular expressions can be found on the Internet,

e.g. at www.regular-expressions.info.

o The regular expression must be fashioned so that the card number is

returned as the first match group.

o Usually one regular expression will be used for all the devices

managed by PaperCut; this must be entered in the “Config editor

(advanced)” which you will find on the Options tab under Actions. The

key is called “ext-device.card-no-regex”.

o The global setting however can be overridden on a per-device basis:

The key “ext-device.card-no-regex” can also be found on the “

Advanced Config tab in the device details screen. This setting will

override the global setting unless the keyword “GLOBAL” is specified.

o PaperCut developers will gladly assist in producing a regular

expression when supplied with a few sample outputs from your card

reader. Please contact PaperCut support.

o If you would like to write your own regular expressions, here are some

examples:

 Use the first 10 characters (any character): (.{10})

 Use the first 19 digits: (\d{19})

 Extract the digits from between the two “=” characters in

“123453=292929=1221”: \d*=(\d*)=\d*

Card Number Format Converters

In addition to extracting parts of the card numbers using regular expressions,

converting numbers from one format to another is a common requirement. For

example a card reader may report in hexadecimal format, while the number stored in

the source (e.g. Active Directory) is in a decimal format. PaperCut includes a number

of inbuilt converters to assist here.

Note: Many card readers are configurable - the number format can be changed at

the hardware level via utility or configuration tools. PaperCut’s software-level

converters are there to support card readers that don’t offer this level of

configuration, or where a global software-level conversion is a better choice. For

example it may be quicker to do the conversion in PaperCut rather than manually

reprogram 100+ readers!

Like regex’s, the convertors may be defined on either a global (all devices) or on a

per-device basis.